Description:
Data Becker's MP3 Wizard 2.0 provides a useful entry-level package for retrieving and managing music files for your MP3 player and CD burner. While it will take a little practice to learn all of the features here, this package gets the job done with a competent set of features for building a library of MP3 music effectively. To get started with MP3, this program makes it easy to search for music on the Internet with hooks for popular MP3 search engines (such as Lycos). Once you find the right files, the MP3 Wizard opens up your browser to let you download music files to your disk drive. Besides the MP3 standard, the program reads CDA files from audio CDs and converts them into WAV files. (One thing to be aware of here is that recording quality can't be controlled within the MP3 Wizard itself. You'll need to change this under Windows settings.) After you have your WAV files, you can add sound effects such as reverb, echo, and flange, as well as "normalize" all your files to the same dynamic range so that you don't have to adjust the volume between tracks. Of course, you'll want plenty of free disk space, memory, and a fast CPU to use this program. (A 233 MHz CPU is the minimum recommended here; the faster, the better.) One reason to buy MP3 Wizard in particular is its support for downloading music files onto today's popular MP3 players (such as Diamond Rio). The program also supports burning custom CDs with just a click of the mouse. (Both 60- and 80-minute CD formats are supported.) Overall, for those who don't mind experimenting a little, the MP3 Wizard is a capable lower-end tool for building a personal Internet music collection. --Rich Dragan
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